I’m here to tell you for the first time or remind you for the gazillionth and one time, that you’re not. I’m here to tell you that fucking a black person does not make you a) anti-racist and b) an authority on blackness and black liberation

And the reasons for this are simple, which is to say, it ain’t trig, damnit.

See, here’s the thing:

You can sleep with a black partner and still believe in the innate criminality of blackness. You can sleep with a black partner and still tout the corrosive thesis of black pathology or black cultural dysfunction. You can sleep with a black partner and not understand a damn thing about (or have any desire to) black, structural unemployment.

You can sleep with a black person and find it utterly impossible, or be solidly unwilling, to connect the multi-generational horrors and tragedies of the American slave experience to the present-day ills — ritualized and fetishized state violence aimed at black bodies, intergenerational poverty, school-to-prison pipeline, an ever-widening and deepening race wealth gap, downward mobility, mass criminalization, etc. — that circumscribe the lives of people who physically resemble, and belong to the same culture, as your partner.

You can sleep with a black person while still convinced that the plight of black Americans is the fault of black people alone and that no state intervention or systemic overhaul is needed, much less earned. And, if you’re a white person who approaches interracial sex and dating in this way, who refuses to listen more and talk less in the presence of black rage, who actively abstains from interacting with black people in another context outside the bedroom, who reduces activism to a matter of tweaking ones’ sexual preferences, then, I can assure you that whatever knowledge or insight you may think you have into black culture and whatever recommendations you may suggest for overcoming racism are weightless.

There is more, much more, to ending racism and white supremacy than individual white persons occupying the same bed with a black body.

Whites fucking blacks didn’t stop slavery. A civil war did. Whites fucking blacks didn’t end Jim Crow. Exhausting court battles, boycotts, street demonstrations, “redemptive suffering,” and unmerciful death did. And the few whites who slept with black people certainly didn’t gain so intimate an understanding of black culture that they were inspired to sacrifice land and limb to protect and advance the lives of their fuck buddies. More than likely, they were test driving black dick or pussy to discern whether or not the myth of black sexuality is palpable.

Racism isn’t merely about the prejudices and debilitating idiosyncrasies of certain brands of individual human behavior at the micro-level of society. Racism is a system — one of the deadliest and most resilient in human history — that structures the whole culture and life prospects of an entire people, whether the people raced, particularly the dominant race benefiting from the system, wish it to be or not.

Progressive policy, community activism, education, and radical economic change designed to reconfigure the whole range of human relationships is the only antidote strong enough to confront, combat, upend, and heal the legacy of racism in America. So, while you’re experimenting with black sexual prowess, bedding someone whom you’ve probably deemed to be a “special” kind of black, someone who is different and stands out from the “them,” you could be busy doing something much more effective like collating suggested readings on the black experience, researching the impact of the policies of Trump’s administration on black lives or sitting front row of a black activist organization taking scrupulous, copious notes on the blunt testimonies of black attendees, whose authority lies in the negation of their existence from birth.

Antwan is an educator, cultural critic, actor, and writer for Wear Your Voice Mag (WYV), where he focuses on the dynamics of class, race, gender, politics, and pop culture. Prior to joining the team at WYV, he was an adjunct professor in the African American Studies Department at Valdosta State University in southern Georgia, where he taught African American Literature. He has traveled the U.S. and U.K. showcasing a fifty-five minute, one-person play titled Whitewash, which focuses on the state of black men in the post-civil rights era. Antwan received his B.A. in English and Literature from California State University, Dominguez Hills, and M.A. in African American Studies from University of California, Los Angeles. He is a Ronald E. McNair Scholar and NAACP theater nominee.